She didn’t want to be here.
/> Mikey always wanted to play baseball. It didn’t matter if she was sick, grounded, at school, eating, or sleeping. If there was a game going on, Mikey made sure to find a way to be there.
But not today. Today, she was dragging her feet and looking absolutely miserable. Over the last week, she’d been smiling, laughing, and tormenting him for her own amusement only to suddenly go quiet last night when his father announced that they had to go home early because Mathew took an unfortunate roll through a patch of poison ivy.
When her mom reminded her that she had a game today, she’d reluctantly nodded and spent the rest of breakfast staring down at her untouched pancakes. She waited until the last minute before she went upstairs and put her uniform on. When she was done, Mikey hesitated until it was finally time to leave and even then, it took her mom reminding her that she was going to be late to get her to go.
He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed either, Sebastian thought as he glanced to his right to find Uncle Reese walking next to them, looking just as worried as Sebastian was. They needed to do something. The season was barely halfway over and he doubted that Mikey was going to be able to keep this up for two more months.
Hoping to distract her, Sebastian said, “He spent the entire time glaring at me. We didn’t catch a single fish and when it was time to come in, we couldn’t because Joshua and Mathew managed to steal our oars when Jonathan threw nightcrawlers at us to distract us. We were stuck out there drifting for two hours before we finally gave up waiting for them to come back and ended up jumping in the water and swimming to shore where we got stuck in the mud.”
“I knew there was a reason why Jonathan was my favorite,” Mikey said, finally cracking a smile, which is the only reason that he let that comment slide.
Besides, Sebastian knew that he was her favorite.
“Looks like the game is about to start,” Uncle Reese said and just like that, the smile on Mikey’s face melted away.
“You don’t have to stay, Dad. I know that you have a lot of work to do,” Mikey said, which wasn’t like her. Mikey normally loved having her parents at her games, especially her stepfather.
“Cleared my day so I wouldn’t miss this,” Uncle Reese said as they reached the baseball fields. He pulled Mikey into a hug and kissed her forehead before he gave one of her braids a playful tug and said, “Go get ‘em.”
With a forced smile, Mikey nodded as she turned around and headed for the dugout only to stop when her coach walked over and asked, “What are you doing here, Campbell?”
“We came back early and I didn’t want to miss another game,” Mikey said, moving to join her team only to stop at the coach’s next words.
“You quit the team, Campbell,” he said, making her frown.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t quit,” Mikey said as Uncle Reese stepped forward.
“What’s going on?” Uncle Reese asked as he wrapped an arm around Mikey’s shoulders.
“Your daughter hasn’t shown up for practice or any of the games for a week,” the coach said, sighing heavily as though it pained him to say this.
“Because she was on a family trip. She told you last Friday,” Uncle Reese said as Sebastian reached over and took Mikey’s trembling hand in his and pulled her back before she lost it.
“And I told her that was fine because that was her decision, but I was very clear about the expectations that I had for every player at the beginning of the season. This wasn’t the first time that I had problems with Mikey. She’s been late before,” the coach said, making Mikey frown.
“It was one time and I had a note from my teacher,” Mikey said, looking confused.
Nodding, Uncle Reese said, “I really don’t think it’s going to matter what we say at this point, not when you finally found an excuse to get my daughter off the team. But, let me ask you something, what kind of coach benches a kid who holds the state record for throwing perfect games? It just seems to me that most coaches would be happy to have a kid like Mikey playing on their team.”
When the coach opened his mouth to answer, Uncle Reese answered for him. “Probably the same coach who wanted to make sure that his son and nephews made the team.”
“I really hope she wasn’t planning on coming out for the team next year,” was all the coach said as he turned around and walked away, leaving Mikey completely devastated.
*-*-*-*
“This was a stupid idea,” Sebastian said as he glanced down at the new target that he’d built for Mikey and sighed.
He’d been wracking his brain over the past week trying to find something that would cheer Mikey up, but so far…
This was the best that he could come up with.
He’d never seen her like this. She’d just shut down and he had no idea how to make this better for her. Over the past week, everyone had been alternating between trying to cheer her up and giving her space. She hadn’t said much since the coach kicked her off the team. She’d simply shut down.
After they’d walked home in silence, she’d headed to her room, took off her uniform and stuffed it in the kitchen trash before closing herself off in her room. She just laid there, staring at the wall and…
God, this was killing him.